Filgaia Park
by Hypes
Summary: Be ready for an adventure 4 Wild ARMs in the making! An extinct race of magnificent creatures is brought back to life by the scientists at Filgaia Park, but can they coexist with man? Arnaud, Racqel, Gawn, and Hauser are about to find out! R&R!
1. Chapter 1

Wild ARMs 4 © Media.vision/SONY/Xseed

**Isle de Muertes – 120 miles south east of Illsviel Island**.

A dark metal crate pushes through branches on a moon lit night, the sounds of machinery following it. The crate continues through the tree tops, carried by a fork lift until they both appear in a small clearing. The clearing is brightly lit, thanks to all of the flood lights set up. The area is also full of people dressed in Congressional Knight soldier uniforms, standing with electrodes ready. Cables and wires of every kind stretch and squirm across the grassy field, from the dark forest perimeter to the loading bay on the side of a tall electrical fence. The soldiers stand, anxious, as they await their commander's orders. The fork lift pulled into the loading bay, lowering its enormous cargo onto steel tracks.

A tall, built man wearing khaki shorts and button up shirt walked from the field to the crate, which was taller than even he. The man peered out from behind his sunglasses and adjusted the brim of his leather cowboy hat over his scarred face. After analyzing the crate for a moment, Balgaine turned to the line of soldiers. "All right ya useless lot, make yourselves handy and get to pushing this crate into the fence." The soldiers complied without hesitation, six of them marching to the rear end of the crate and bracing their bodies against it. Balgaine scowled as the soldiers put their weight into it, pushing the crate along the tracks into the electrical fence. A red light on the fence switched to green and a loud ring sounded into the midnight wood. The commanding giant cleared his throat. "Clear the area." The soldiers did as told, leaving the crate well enough alone. Balgaine turned to a soldier standing behind him. "You! Go lift the door."

The soldier swallowed. "Me? Why me! What did I ever do to deserve this?"

"Look you bloody rotter, why the hell not you!" Balgaine raised an eyebrow. "It's not like you're important to anyone or anything. You have no sense of individualism. You look like every other soldier, no name tag, no nothing. Hell, you have your helmet so low we can't even see your eyes, which makes you a soul less vessel for my doing. Now get on top of that crate and lift that door!"

Seeing the folly of his ways, the random soldier slumped forward, climbed on top of the metal box, and squatted over the front. When he opened this door, whatever was in this crate would go into its pen, beyond the electrical fence. The soldier swallowed and placed both hands tightly on the door handle, and with all his might, lifted. The door slid open, and whatever it was that was inside the crate did not do as predicted. It did not rush out of its crate and into its pen. No, instead, it leaped up, bashing into the side of the crate, knocking it askew. The soldier fell off the crate and onto the cement below. He gritted his teeth and rubbed his bleeding knee when a purple paw reached from the crate into the space between the crate and the fence, grabbing the soldiers boot.

"Shoot her!" Balgaine shouted. "SHOOT HER!"

"But sir! We have electrodes, not guns!" Another soldier replied.

"Oh gotta be a bloody smart-aleck, eh? Well then shock her! SHOCK HER!" Balgaine commanded.

And what Balgaine wants, Balgaine gets, or something in that line of thinking. The soldiers rushed forward, sticking their electrodes through the slits in the crate and delivering one hell of a jolt to the beast within. But the creature, despite all of its shouting and screaming, proved vigilant in its quest for a meal. The soldier screamed and shouted, and even with his compatriots pulling him, the creature's appetite would be fulfilled. In one last tug, the beast pulled the soldier completely into its lair before having the bajeesus zapped out of it.

Balgaine watched from his position, allowing the men to zap the caged creature. Balgaine had only one response to the scene before him, the loss of a soldier. "Pussy."

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Mano De Dios Dragon Fossil Mines

A slender dark skinned man in a business suit stood in a mine cat as it was slowly pulled through a dark cavern. The man sighed and brushed a hand through his white hair. "Is there no other way we can do this?" The crimson eyes man hissed.

"No senior, there's no walking on the tracks." A local sand blasted Baskar replied from down the tracks as he pulled in the cart from a rope.

"Hmmm. I thought all you Baskar were annihilated." Scythe pondered one hand on a heavy briefcase, the other to his chin.

"That's what the government would want you to believe. It's really a conspiracy." The miner replied.

"A conspiracy to get Filgaians to lose their jobs to illegal immigrants." Scythe sneered.

"Watch your head!" The worker shouted.

"Why would I –OW-!" Scythe was rather rudely interrupted by a stalactite hanging from the red rock roof. The Crimson noble frowned. It wasn't long before he was completely reeled in and allowed out of the cart. Scythe did just that, dusting off a shoulder and tossing a nickel to the Baskar. He walked not more than three paces before a man in uniform appeared. Unlike the workers surrounding him, this man was not Baskar but rather a light skinned fellow with light brown trim hair. Though he may have appeared to be cleaner cut and proper than his fellow unearthers, he was still covered with patches of soil and dirt. He grinned as Scythe arrived. "Archibald? I don't want you, I want Hauser, where is he!" Scythe narrowed his eyes.

"Hauser sends his apologies; he could not be here to meet you." Archibald smirked in a darker mood than what was normal for him. He turned and started walking down further into the mine, past Baskar with picks, chopping away at the walls.

"A soldier is killed and he can't even come out to meet me. His family wants reparations; we're talking thousands, if not millions, of Gella. This is serious." Scythe shook his head as he followed.

"A nameless soldier with no eyes has a family? Didn't see that one coming." Archibald kidded as he climbed down a short ladder.

"Well apparently the investors didn't either." Scythe was having a difficult time going down the ladder with the briefcase and dress shoes and all. "Now they want to double check everything. They want at least two experts there to check things out before it opens."

Archibald looked over his shoulder as he walked into a blue cave. "You mean like an inspection? Hauser hates inspections, they only reveal to the cops all the cooked books and corrupt officials you hire."

"Yea, well, if there's no inspection, the money pulls out." Scythe said as he ducked under a low rafter. "They already got Dr. Gawn, but they don't want him. They say he's too…"

"Too what?" Archibald replied as he stopped in his quest before a machine saw and its operator, busy hacking away at a chunk of rock.

"Too, well, stupid. They want Vasquez." Scythe was glad they stopped so he could catch his breath.

"Oh you'll never get Vasquez." Archibald laughed. He tapped the saw operator on one shoulder. The operator glanced that way as Archibald stole the rock he was working on. Archibald turned to Scythe and whistled between his fingers. "Oi! Muchachoes!" The Baskar all looked towards their boss. The rock which Archibald held in his grip was not really a rock at all, but the toothy lower jaw of a small dragon. "For you see, Arnaud is a digger, heh heh heh…"

Scythe raised an eyebrow. "Why all the dramatic laughing?"

**FILGAIA PARK**

An Adventure 4 Wild ARMs in the making

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**Mim' Krilu Flats – Below Mim' Krilu Skyway**

The sand was delicately being brushed away, fleck by fleck, pebble by pebble, by dozens of busy hands with an assortment of brushes and tools. The sun shone quite brilliantly over the dry arid landscape and over all of its crags, nooks, crannies, and bones. Or at least, the fossils that were being unearthed by the many men and women kneeling over a lean skeleton, resembling that of an ancient spike covered canine. The men and women themselves were dressed much differently than the soldiers of the mines. They themselves were a series of townsfolk clothes, seeing how as most of them had come all the way from Buck Eye Station for a little excavation. The canine's skull was almost completely free of dust and sand, seeing the blue sky for the first time in millions of years. Kneeling over the head was a thin young man with brown hair, dressed in a white and orange jacket and block trousers and boots. His face was dead serious as he set to brushing the very last fleck of sand off the nasal ridge of the skull.

"Doctor! Dr. Vasquez! Paging Doctor Vasquez! We're ready to try again!" a voice shouted from down the sandy hill. Visibly irritated, Aranaud stood up from his brushing and quickly pocketed the small brush. He sighed.

"Come on Arnaud, you have to join the 21st century some time." A feminine voice chided him. He glanced to his right as a young woman, slightly taller than he was, rose, brushing the dust off her long black dress and her leather coat. She ran a hand under her silver hair and wiper her brow. "How do you expect to answer e-mail if you never touch a computer?" Raquel laughed.

"I'll stick to traditional mail, thank you very much. I mean, you don't get spam in the regular mail." Arnaud huffed.

"Oh? Than what do you call Publisher's Weekly or Shop Smart coupons?" Raquel grinned.

"Hey! Any chance of striking it rich I take. Someday Publishers Weekly, someday…" Arnaud shook his fist to the sky. "Now let's get this over with."

The two joined up with the troop of people standing around a make shift base, the center of it being a computer. A group of tourists hovered by, watching and waiting for something to happen, like vultures over looking prey. Not that the tourists were going to eat the paleontologists, but it was just creepy. Do something, Do something… Anyhow, not far from this scene was a man attending to a rather strange device that resembled a red dolly with a tire attached to the bottom. The man pressed a button and the machine let out a thunderous shock to the ground. Clouds of dust flew off into the area just in time for Vasquez and Applegate's arrival. They coughed as they stepped under the tent and looked at the monitor. Scanning in was what appeared to be an ultrasound of the ground, and a large canine skeleton fading in.

"Heh. A few more years of this and we wont even have to dig anymore. We'll just invite the earth in for an ultrasound every few months and take pictures Gob." The Gob operating the computer snickered.

"Not if I have anything to say about it." Arnaud grimaced. "I like getting my pretty hair and perfect skin covered in dust and being dragged out to the middle of the God forsaken desert thank you very much."

"I think he was being sarcastic." Raquel sighed. She turned her attention to the monitor. "Looks like a Lucied. Just take a look at these hip abrasions."

"You mean right here?" Arnaud touched the screen. That moment the monitor exploded into flames. "God damn computers." The Gob grabbed a fire extinguisher in time to save the picture. Raquel his a few giggles. Arnaud growled and attempted to get over his phobia of technology. "Well, if you look here at the spinal column its loose and unfused, and the ribs are compact. This thing was made for chasing down giant prey and tearing it to bits." There were some chuckles from the crowd. Arnaud turned to them, hands in the air. "What? I'm serious here. Just get a PHD in animal physiology and then laugh. This thing was built for destruction."

"I don't see what's so scary about it." A small boy dressed in a green and white shirt holding an ice cream cone challenged Vasquez. "It looks like a big dog."

Arnaud responded to Bryans challenge and stepped out from under the tent and under the desert sun, fingers twitching. "Oh really? Is that so? Well," Arnaud stepped to the small boy and bent over so that they were eye to eye. He then took out a large claw. "You see this? This is the claw of a Lucied." He then slashed at the kid's cone, knocking it onto the sand below. "First, they'd take away your ice cream." Arnaud then decked the annoying brat, sending him to the dirt. "Then they'd pounce on you!" He raised the claw and was about to attack when Raquel hurried over.

"Wow Arnaud, you make such a great argument. Yup, that Lucied is one dangerous creature, so let's get back to our dig." Raquel prodded Arnaud away from the scene.

"You remember that little man! Don't mess with the Lucied!" Arnaud shouted.

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"Pshhhaw, kids." Arnaud pouted as the two climbed the dune back to their dig. "I can't believe you wanna have one of those before you die a horrible diseased death."

"Well, not that kid, but some form of child. Yea and what's this about a diseased death?" Raquel raised an eyebrow.

"Nothing. Nothing at all." Arnaud whistled.

"What's so bad about kids anyway?" Raquel asked. "We were kids once."

"I wasn't a snotty nosed, loud, obnoxious, brat." Arnaud replied.

"Not all kids are like that! Just all the ones you run into." Raquel defended.

It was then when a loud roar came over the desert. A plane was landing, drawing up huge clouds of sand. Something that any bone digger was afraid of. Arnaud and Raquel immediately turned around, seeing the plane land near the operating tent. Arnaud gritted his teeth. "Oh what the hael? We just cleaned up! HEY! COVER THEM BONES! I bet you a kid is driving that plane." Thus the two rushed down the dune.

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After shouting at the pilot some, Arnaud rushed into his trailer. It wasn't a movie star trailer mind you, but a little trailer home, sitting out in the desert. Inside was a table with all sorts of bones thrown on it, a series of counters, a few chairs, and a refrigerator. And a large violet-red haired black garbed man digging through that fridge. What a minute! That's not supposed to be there! Upon seeing this, Arnaud was first outraged, and then skeptical. He was very big, but then outraged again, cus he was messing with his fridge. No one messes with Arnaud's fridge! That's where he keeps his food! "HEY!" Arnaud shouted, hoping his authority over the trailer would help him. The giant of a man stood up and turned to meet the owner of the trailer, in his hands was a box of Juicy Juice, of which he neatly inserted a bendy straw into. "HEY! We were saving that!" Arnaud was in shock. Here he was, in his trailer, with some man raiding his fridge and drinking the revered, almost holy, box of Juicy Juice that he was saving for a special occasion.

"For today." The man spoke with almost no emotion. Arnaud could tell he was trying to sound happy, but his physique and image just wouldn't let him.

"Who do you think you are, you… big…strong…nice man who isn't going to beat me up." Aranaud was angry, but in fear of the giant.

"I can see my 50,000 Gella a year is being spent quite well." The man replied.

"50,000 Gella a year? Huh, that's not even enough to synthesize anything in Halim, Oh wait, OH! You're our funder! Look about those things I was going to say to you…"

"Oh, don't worry about it." Hauser replied. "I break into a lot of trailers and steal their Juicy Juices."

"O.K, whose gonna have a Smash Hit on them!" Raquel barked as she entered the trailer.

"Raquel, listen, this is Hauser, our funder, wink wink nudge nudge ixnay on the mash hit say." Arnaud ushered Raquel into the trailer.

"I'm Hauser." Hauser re-introduced himself. "You two must be Dr. Vasquez and Dr. Applegate, I assume." He strained to crack a smile. "Look, I'll cut to the chase so we can enjoy this Juicy Juice. I'm not very fond of lawyers, are you?"

Arnaud and Raquel rubbed the back of their heads. "Well, um, we can't say we've ever had a run in with one. But from what I've heard, they're not very likable creatures." Arnaud shrugged.

"Well I know too many. Blood sucking vampires is what they are, trying to suck away at your wallet. There's a whole army of them on my back and that's where I need your help." Hauser replied.

"But your Hauser, you can handle anything!" Raquel responded.

"You'd think, but, erm, I own an island, off the coast of Illsviel. Oh don't worry, it's a great deal away from there, you don't need to worry about prisoners or cannons or wild arms and what not. It's sort of like an ecological preserve that I've got there, with attractions that makes the park in the Sea of Trees look like a low level killing field."

"What sort of attractions?" Arnaud raised an eyebrow. "I'm not seeing how we connect here."

"Well, there was an accident at the park and my investors are really cracking down, so they want an outside opinion, a guinea pig, to make sure the place is fit for adults and Gobs and such." Hauser poured the contents of the Juicy Juice into three small cups.

"What kind of opinion do they want?" Raquel asked.

"Well, your kind to be exact." Hauser strained to give her a smile. This part is so not working with his bad ass-ness. "Actually, his to be precise, but I guess I could use yours too. Just come down to my island for the weekend and tell me what you think!"

"Look, uh, we'd love to go take a look at some Barghests and a Jumbo Bear Cat or two, but we're kinda busy." Arnaud rubbed the back of his head.

"Oh that's too bad," A wild look appeared in Hauser's eyes. "Because I'd be prepared to fully fund your excavation for a further three years."

"We'd love to take a look at your Barghests and Jumbo Bear-Cats!" Raquel eagerly shook Hauser's hand.

"Good! Then let's drink on it!" Hauser lifted his cup of juice. And then they downed the sacred Juicy Juice.

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**Frontier Town Halim**

"No one knew why it was called Frontier Town Halim. I mean, its right dab in the center of the map, right between Guara Bobelo and Port Rosalia, the two biggest cities there are. But you can argue, New York and San Francisco are two huge cities and the frontier was between them, much like Halim is between Guara Bobelo and Port Rosalia, but I'd counter with, what the hell is New York and San Francisco? San Francisco sounds like a gay sandwich. A tasty sandwich, but still homo. Ungh, what was I thinking about?" These were the thoughts of Acting Commander Tony, a fat man dressed in a soldier's uniform, as he sat at a café in Halim, surrounded by slices of pie and melon. He was feeling in the mood for pie and melon today, one would suppose. The café was outside, surrounded by Chicken peddlers and melon mongers. Some big band music was coming from a shop near by, presumably the Teddy bear shop. Tony winced. What was that kid thinking, naming the store the Teddy Bear store? Doesn't she know that bears are horrendous creatures that would sooner render you asunder than look at you? Tony's thoughts were interrupted as a familiar face walked into the area. Well, maybe not face, as it was hid under a pair of sunglasses and a bowlers cap. The man walking into the scene was dressed in a Trench coat, Hawaiian shirt and loose shorts, had long blond hair tied in a pony tail, and just gave off an aura of assholeness. Tony waved and shouted. "JEREMY! Hey JEREMY!"

The man, Jeremy, quickly trotted over to the table and sat down amongst the plates of melon and pie. He leaned towards Tony and whispered. "Don't use my real name, it's suspicious."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "You wanna talk about suspicious? You're the one wearing a trench coat and sunglasses!" Tony then turned and shouted. "JEREMY! WE GOT JEREMY HERE!" A nerve appeared on Jeremy's forehead and he immediately socked Tony on the side of the head. "Ow! What was that for!"

"It's for being an idiot." Jeremy growled. "Look, here's the suitcase, I've got 15000 Gella for each Rune you bring back."

Tony squealed with delight. "Ooh! That much money could buy a lot of pie indeed! Heh heh! Look, consider it a done deal, now how do I get those runes out?"

"Here, take this." Jeremy handed Tony a toy hammer. "Just squeeze the top and it pops off," Jeremy demonstrated, "Just put the runes inside. Look, don't give me that look, cus I could mutherfuggin kill you right here, bitch!"

Tony let it slide because it was Jeremy and Jeremy always threatened people like that. "What happens if someone wants to use it?"

"C'mon, people never get Amnesia out in the South Seas. Be realistic here, ya dumb shit." Jeremy sighed. "Now I want to know how you're getting out of there."

"I've got a fifteen minute coffee break during the day. Have your man on the docks and I'll give it to him there." Tony munched some pie.

"Your job has coffee breaks? Wow, must be nice. See, at my jobs, we're not bitches and can go without them, ya bitch!" Jeremy scowled.

"Look, after tomorrow, the Congressional Knights Inc. will have the runes and be caught up on fifteen years of research. All thanks to me, I'll be sure to have a promotion!" Tony laughed.

"Except your getting paid to do this." Jeremy pointed out.

"Speaking of getting paid, you can handle this bill, right?" Tony eyed Jeremy.

"What the hell is this! I'm mutherfuggin Jeremy you bitch!" Jeremy then clocked Tony again and left, griping about something…

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	2. Chapter 2

The sea was sparkling blue on this cloudless day over the South Seas, the suns rays shimmering over the surface. Land was no where in sight, small schools of Sky Fish leaped through the small waves, flitting their bodies in the mid day air. Sea birds glided without effort, snipping at the small prey the Sky Fish were hunting. Also flying among these white feathered animals was a bird of steel, a gray and blue helicopter with the word "Brionac" lettered across it.

Seated in this luxurious private helicopter on one side was Hauser, in his most cheerful mood, Arnaud, not paying attention to anything whatsoever, and Raquel, who gleefully chatted away to the other side facing them, which consisted of the lawyer Scythe, who looked bored out of his white head, and a tall, built man dressed in a green leather jacket, a white under shirt, and khakis. His hair was neat and trim, brown with a white stripe running through it, and a frozen noodle on his lip. This man grinned and gave an odd laugh every so often.

"Isn't this park a little far away for a zoo?" Arnaud asked as he toyed with a fossilized Lucied claw. "Who's going to fly a chopper half way across the world to see a few wild animals?"

"Maybe, maybe they have, uh, Grow-Grow Apples, and, if we're lucky, Super Grow Apples on this island." The green jacketed man gave a laugh. "Har har."

"Even Grow Apples pale in comparison to my attractions." Hauser replied.

"Oh what could be better than Grow Apples, Hauser?" Gawn chewed his gum rather loudly. He then turned to face Arnaud and Raquel, "So you two dig up Guardians?"

Arnaud rolled his eyes as Raquel smiled. "Well, he does. I help, I'm a pale botanist, and I study ancient plants and ecosystems."

"Ancient, ancient plants, you say?" Gawn raised his eyebrows. "As far as I understood it, Filgaia was a desert for most of its life, if I'm not mistaken."

"Well," Arnaud interrupted Raquel before she could correct him, "Filgaia has been a desert for most of its time, yes. We've divided Filgaian history into five zones, in which the first zone, the planet was formed from dust and planetoids fusing together, the second zone life began and plants colonized the land and seas formed-"

"The Adelhyde stage" Raquel interrupted.

Arnaud looked to Raquel, "Yes, the third zone plants grow even more as jungles appeared for the first time, though much of the world was still dry and baron, the Maria Boule zone, the third stage, the Advanced stage, is which a climate shift dried out 99 of the bodies of water and dried up the whole planet. Several millions of years later, the climate began to return to a normal balance and we entered our current zone."

Hauser looked to Scythe. "You see, I bring the scientists, you bring the rock star!"

"Oh trust me, he's no rock star, can't sing a note." Scythe retorted.

"Ah, very interesting. Interesting indeed." Gawn mused. "And Guardians inhabited the planet for all those stages, except for the current one, where they went extinct at the end of the last zone. But this is where it gets me, why would Hauser, you, bring Paleontologists to your park." Gawn leaned back and grinned.

"Ah you have to excuse Dr. Gawn here, our mathematician; he suffers from the most retarded of personalities." Hauser crossed his arms.

"Chaotitian, Chaotitian, Hauser, not mathematician." Gawn leaned forward, protesting with his fingers. Hauser replied with a whatever as Gawn looked to the two young Guardian diggers. "You-you two know what a chaotitian is, don't you?" Arnaud shrugged as Raquel shook her head.

"Gawn, nobody knows what the hell a chaotitian is." Scythe replied.

"Chaos theory, you know what chaos theory is, right?" Gawn made another attempt.

"Not a clue." Raquel smiled.

"Does it have anything to do with Arcana?" Arnaud shrugged again.

"Chaos theory, you know the butterfly effect? If a butterfly flaps its wings in Buck Eye, a hurricane hits Illsviel?" Gawn made more attempts to jog someone's memory.

Look!" Hauser leaned foreword and pointed out the side window. "There it is." Just outside the chopper, a series of forest covered cliffs were coming into view. The chopper soon flew into the island, over its steep sloped exterior covered in green foliage and through a jungle coated gorge. The sight was astonishing as tropical forest stretched as far as anyone could see, right up the cliff faces and over the jagged cliff tops, adorning the island face in bright tropical flowers and bright feathered birds. The chopper was approaching a waterfall. Hauser made this point to announce a safety measure. "It's going to get a bit bumpy, so seat belts everyone."

"Only kids wear seatbelts." Arnaud grinned as everyone else buckled up. The decent down the waterfall was turbulent to say the least, knocking Arnaud all across the cabin. Now he wished he had buckled up for sure. After a few "fun" moments, the chopper touched down on a cement helipad, nestled in near pond at the base of the falls. Several soldiers rushed to the chopper door and opened the latch, allowing Arnaud to collapse onto the cement. The soldiers, ignoring Vasquez, aided the rest out and onto the ground. Two open top jeeps were sitting on a dirt road near by, awaiting its passengers. Arnaud helped himself up as the rest of the tourists gazed about at the tropical beauty. Hauser stepped forward and smiled. "We're here." And then the group stepped into the jeeps, splitting up when needed, and finally closing the doors, on which a logo was placed, reading "Filgaia Park".

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The two jeeps rolled through some heavy electrified fencing that stretched at least twenty feet high, an odd measure Arnaud thought before driving off road across some grassy terrain. The sun shone over the field as the cars drove up a series of hills.

"I just want you to know, Hauser, that this isn't some sort of vacation, but an inspection to the highest degree, so help me God I'll shut you down if I see anything out of place!" Scythe leaned over the back of his chair to announce to Hauser and Gawn, sitting in the back.

"Relax Scythe, all that anger isn't good for your blood pressure." Hauser replied.

"I'm a Crimson Noble, Hauser, I know everything there is to know about blood, thank you very much. Your investors are anxious, Hauser, they want to know about every screw and nail placed in this park. If I'm not happy in 48 hours, they're not happy."

"In 48 hours, you'll owe me an apology." Hauser grinned.

"And-and in another 48 hours, uh, Eddie Murphy switches places yet again! Mind you." Gawn interrupted.

Another car in front of them, Raquel was inspecting a piece of green foliage she had plucked from a shrub near by on the way. "I don't get it Arnaud, this species of Dryad shouldn't be here, this plant's been extinct since the end of the Advanced era."

"I dunno, maybe we're on the island of the undead." Arnaud shrugged.

Back in the car behind them, Hauser, noticing something nobody else caught, tapped the driver's shoulders telling him to stop. Wordlessly, the driver sis just that, stopping the caravan on the grassy knoll. "Everyone, look." Hauser whispered.

Arnaud casually glanced in the direction Hauser pointed, thinking some Balberith was trotting by, but he soon made a double take. He was soon in shock, struck speechless. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and stood up, gazing in that direction.

"Maybe they used time arcane to bring this plant back, or, -what?" Raquel stopped her blabbing as Arnaud prodded her shoulder. However, the moment she looked up, her eyes locked on to a target, and as much dumb founded as Arnaud, she stood up silent. The two then staggered out of the jeep as Hauser came to meet them, the trio then walking up the knoll along a few impact tremors rocking the earth and a giant shadow enveloping the hill. Scythe sat in awe as Gawn meddled with a ROM.

"Damn ROM! Why is it so damn hard to hit those crates! Hey, hey is everyone so silent? What are we looking at!" Gawn looked up but failed to see the impressive sight before them.

Arnaud walked ahead, his steps shaky, as he walked in the shadow of a massive green scaled creature chomping away at the top of an enormous hundred foot tree. The creature stood upon its back legs and switched its tail back and forth in a lazy manner as the wind blew along its plated back. The giant green reptile took another step towards a different tree, its foot shaking the earth under its weight. "Its, it's a Guardian!" Arnaud happily announced.

"A live guardian!" Raquel laughed.

"Yes, indeed." Hauser chirped.

"It's, uh, it's Grudiev, if I'm not mistaken, oh Wow!" Arnaud continued to studder.

"Correct again, Dr. Vasquez. I told you this would be right up your alley." Hauser patted Arnaud's back.

Gawn finally looked up, a smile coming across his face. "Oh, it's a guardian. Hauser, you crazy son of a bitch, you did it."

"We're going to be rich…" Scythe whispered.

The Guardian slowly walked to the next tree and chomped off the top, munching on the branches without a care. Arnaud turned to Raquel and Hauser and then back to the Grudiev, the biggest smile ever on his face. "It's a god damn Grudiev!" He began to laugh. "And it's eating leaves?"

"What's its diet? How much do they eat?" Raquel began firing questions at the purple haired man.

"Well, we guess the Equitess eats at least a ton of meat a day." Hauser grinned.

Arnaud stopped in his tracks and grabbed the older man by the shoulders. "You have an Equitess?"

Hauser tilted his head and smiled. "Yes, we have an Equitess!"

"Oh God, I haven't been this dizzy since they announced Advent Children." Arnaud slumped to the grass. He then looked over the hill at the lake before him where several more Grudievs were dining on the forest in front of them.

"Look Arnaud, they move in herds." Raquel leaned over Arnauds shoulder.

"Which makes us completely wrong about them…" Arnaud raised an eyebrow. He turned to Hauser who stepped near by. "How did you do this?"

Hauser smiled. "I'll show you." He then took a few steps away. "Welcome, to Filgaia Park!"

Just then the Grudiev, not satisfied with its food, leaped up, grabbing the very top of the tree in its jaws, and came crashing down to earth, sending tremors in all directions.

"We're going to be filthy rich…" Scythe smiled. "But I'll still take a bath…"

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The two jeeps pulled up in front of a large complex, about as large as, say, Dievas Airport, except not crawling with undead monsters. Tropical plants and beautiful fountains sat in front of the main entrance, which was decorated like a giant tropical hut, made of stone and decorated with dragon fossils. Parts of it were still under construction as soldiers of all kinds were painting, using Gears to plaster the walls, things like that. Hauser led the group into the building, through the double doors, and into the impressive lobby. The floors were a shiny dark tile and the room itself was a two story dome with a second floor ring going around the sides. The stairway spiraled around a colossal skeleton of a Fengalon being attacked by a skeleton Equitess, above them a banner stretched the room, proudly proclaiming "When Guardians Ruled the World". Hauser marched up the stairs, pass the Soldiers cleaning up, leading the team. "Welcome to the Visitor Center, a state-of-the-art facility meant to handle the toughest of crowds with five star dining and accommodations as well as educational programs spared no expense!"

"Well, what do you two think so far?" Scythe asked the youngest pair as they went up.

"I think we're out of a job." Arnaud sarcastically replied.

"Don't you mean "extinct"? Oh, yes, I'm a Jack Ass." Gawn added.

The group emerged into a dark room, resembling a small movie theater, where a few rows of seats sat opposite of a large screen and stage. Hauser walked up stage, explaining the financing of the place and what not as the rest were urged to take their seats. Another Hauser, on screen, approached the living Hauser. "Well hello Hauser." The fake Hauser said.

"Oh, wait, what?" Hauser was confused. "Oh wait! I'm supposed to be reciting something here." Hauser cleared his throat. "Too be, or not to be? Wait, that's not it."

"Well that's fine and dandy, but how did I get here?" The fake Hauser asked.

"Oh yea!" A light bulb appeared over Hauser's head. "I'll show you, but first, I'll need a sample of your blood."

"Oh I like where this is going." Scythe grinned.

The real Hauser pricked the fake Hausers' finder with a needle, and suddenly an army of Hausers appeared on screen. "Ha! And now with this army, I shall take my revenge for kicking my dog!" Hauser laughed. "Erm, I mean, uh…"

"I say, what's going on!" The fake Hauser asked.

"It's the miracle of cloning, my dear Hauser." Hauser explained. Appearing out of the fake Hauser's finger appeared a small Grow Apple.

"Hello, I'm Mr. Grow Apple, and though I have absolutely nothing to do with how your body works or cloning, allow me to explain anyway chu!" The Grow Apple then pulled down a curtain with several diagrams on it.

"Your body is composed of cells, they're in your eyes, your hair, your nose, and your blood, chu! Inside your cells is something that's called DNA, or deoxyribonucleic Acid! DNA is like a blueprint for a living thing, you, a palm tree, a Gob, or even a Nybbas, chu. Your cells follow your DNA's instructions to build you, chu!" Mr. Grow Apple began.

"Yea, but where do you get 40 million year old Guardian DNA?" Arnaud leaned over to Raquel.

"Hey you two! Quit making out in the dark!" Gawn shouted.

"To get Guardian DNA, our scientists at Filgaia Park had to work real hard chu! Basicly, the existence of a Guardian is imprinted on the basic, primordial memories of every creature alive. Though we may not be aware of it, every memory of every creature and event is imprinted inside our own memories, chu. Scientists at Filgaia Park figured out how to harness and extract these memories into information we call "Runes", chu."

"What! Is this true? My head!" Gawn grabbed at his skull.

"The problem is, for every creature, there's billions and billions of strands of memory. If we were to look at one strand a second, it would take two years to figure out one creature. It's that long, chu! But it's full of holes! That's because our memories aren't perfect and some bits are hard to reach. To find these holes, chu, we use thinking machines and super computers to find them. Once extracted, we fill the holes on the DNA with the DNA of toads for no reason at all, and CHU! We can make a baby Guardian!" The cinema continues with a giant Grudiev walking the earth and shaking everything around it.

"I didn't get that at all." Gawn scratched his head.

"Me neither." Raquel shrugged.

"Does this have to do with that Yggdrassil thing?" Arnaud was confused.

"And now we continue!" Hauser took a seat. Then brace bars clamped down from the back of the seats in front of them, imprisoning all within.

"The hell is this?" Scythe asked.

"I knew it! We're going to be fed to the Guardians!" Gawn shouted.

"It's sort of a ride." Hauser replied as the entire room began to move down a track. The screen gave way to a glass wall, beyond which many scientists worked about their daily work, reading papers, pressing buttons, and talking at the cooler.

"Well looky here chu! It's those Filgaia Park scientists hard at work…" The grow Apple voice came through a P.A system.

"Wait! How do you interrupt the geobot chromosphere (please make me sound smart)?" Arnaud asked.

"Oh My Gawd! Are those eggs back there!" Raquel pointed through the glass.

"Alright everyone! Let's throw off the oppressive chains of misery! On three!" Gawn announced. The three of them pushed up the bar and stepped off the rise, followed by a worried Hauser.

"They can't do that, can they?" Scythe protested.


	3. Chapter 3

The group filed into the laboratory, following the lead of one intrigued Arnaud Vasquez. In came behind him Raquel, Gawn, Hauser, and Scythe. The laboratory was not the kind we as Wild ARMs fans have come to expect. It wasn't dirty, forgotten, filled with monsters, adult mags, Wild ARMS, prisoners, card keys, informative memos, elevators, puzzles, riddles, dead scientists, holmcrosses, samples, Hojo, Flashy wall panels, demons, green men, or abused children. Instead, the place was full of scientist in white coats and sterilized latex gloves, computers computing, super computers super computing, dates, numbers, and eggs! The group of inquisitive paleontologists (and a chaotician) surrounded the egg incubator. It was large, round, and made of sticks and branches.

Scythe tapped a pen to his lip as he looked to Hauser. "So these people are auto…automail?"

"Automail? That's something completely different!" Arnaud glanced to Scythe. "It's Autorotica!"

Gawn shook his head. "No, not that, it's uh, it's uh, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, um," Gawn snapped his fingers. "Penguins, ice, cold tea, plantations, menial labor, robots, animatronics!"

Hauser eyed the lot. "What are you people stupid!" Hauser was about to break free from this emotional shell he had put over himself, but then decided it was not in the best ideas to do just that. "No Scythe, we don't have animatronics here. These are the real miracle workers of Filgaia Park." Just then, another scientist rode in on a giant motorcycle, honking at the other scientists in his wake. He was a young man with brown hair that covered one brown eye, wearing blue uniform and white pants underneath his white lab coat. His rode up to the incubator and parked, stepping off the motorized vehicle and slipping out a clipboard from underneath his coat. Hauser extended an arm to the man, who reluctantly shook it back. "Ah, this Dr. Ahtreide."

"Hi, Dr. Ahtreide!" The remaining members of the party waved.

"Hey…" Kresnik shook his hair so it flipped into place. He didn't seem rather excited about what he was doing. "My conviction wont let me leave these eggs unattended when we all hop onto the boat, but in the end we all die, you know what I mean, heh." He then took out a cigarette and gave a puff.

"Are… you allowed to smoke in here?" Raquel raised an eyebrow.

"Hey, I ain't no conformist, man. I do what I want, which is sulk In this uncaring world." Kresnik sighed.

"Right, so how are those surveys coming along?" Hauser coughed.

"I dunno, I'm too busy creating my play list of AFI, My Chemical Romance, The Used. When I feel like my heart is about to die a cold black death or if I'm going to slit my wrists because I'm tired of these gray skies that constantly haunt my soul, I listen to them and forget about my problems." Kresnik did that flippy hair thing and applied some mascara.

"Anyway…" Arnaud looked to Hauser. "What temperature do the eggs need to be? How do they keep warm?"

"Well duh, there sitting in a big pile of sticks!" Gawn pointed out. "It must be EGGstreamly comfortable in there, bad um chu!"

"Everything is taken care of dude." Kresnik replied. One of the eggs began to crack. Small noises came from the inside as the egg began to move about. "Looks like one of them is about to enter this hell on Earth."

"Oh I hoped they'd all hatch before the crew left." Hauser kneeled so his massive body was level to that off the hatching egg. "I'm happy to say I've been present for the birth of every creature on this island."

"Just how fast do these things grow anyway?" Arnaud crossed his arms. "That Grudiev out there was like a hundred feet tall."

"Come on! Push! Push! Push! Breathe, just breath! Now relax. Do it as we practiced in lamaz, push!" Hauser talked to the egg. A tiny purple snout emerged from the fractured egg shell. Hauser did his best to take off pieces of egg shell as the rest looked on in horror. Hauser then picked up a small bloody purple wolf creature, who squealed in return.

"Mazeltave!" Gawn replied.

"What's its body temperature? High eighties?" Arnaud asked Kresnik.

"Well aren't you Mr. Questions today?" Kresnik replied. "Life is pointless."

Raquel coughed. "Hauser, you said earlier you've been present for the birth of all the creatures here. What about the ones in the wild?"

"Oh, they can't breed." Kresnik replied as Hauser looked up, passing Arnaud the baby guardian. Arnaud squealed in joy.

"Why not?" Raquel replied.

"All the animals in the park are female, you get me. They can't get it on." Kresnik said.

"Well how do you know?" Gawn chewed on his frozen noodle. "Do you check all the guardians for either purses or wallets? What if, what if one of them, uh, has a tote bag! What then?"

"Do you listen to yourself when you talk?" Scythe rolled his eyes.

"You don't …neuter them do you?" Arnaud was hesitant to ask.

"No scissors involved." Kresnik ran a hand through his hair. "When they're developing, we keep the temperature at a certain degree so that they all develop as females. We can do that. It's almost…godly, man."

"So if my Mom had the AC on a little higher, I could have been a man." Raquel placed a hand to her chin.

"I'm afraid it's not the same with human beings." Hauser stood up. "There is no unauthorized breeding in Filgaia Park!"

"Just look at this place, the lack of respect for mother nature." Gawn grumbled. "Hatching wolves from eggs, determining the gender of the creatures for your selves. Life doesn't need this, life doesn't need you! Life will take its bags, march out the door, and go back to Moms house, but eventually, uh, life will find a way!"

The baby purple spiked wolf nipped at Arnaud's thumb, causing his wince. He handed the creature back to Kresnik. "What species is this anyway?"

"Uh, definatly Lucied, bro." Kresnik replied as he received the creature.

"You're hatching Lucieds?" Arnaud repeated.

"That's what he said." Raquel retorted.

"Yup! Isn't it great!" Hauser shrugged.

--- ---

A howl interrupted the mid day heat, unnerving all within the vicinity. Not far from the Visitor Center was a heavily fortified pen, walls made out of concrete fifteen feet high and a roof construed of high voltage electrical cables. A catwalk encircled the opening at the top, allowing viewers to witness whatever horror was hidden within the foliage inside. Arnaud was standing in the clearing before the pen, listening to the terrible howls of whatever creature lurked within.

"Hey Dr. Vasquez! Lunch is being served and your missing it!" Hauser bellowed as he and the rest of the group caught up with them. "Our cook made something delicious, I'm sure!"

Mechanical sounds began to resonate throughout the jungle. A crane appeared out of the pen, carrying within its grasp a young maiden dressed in a pink gown with long blonde hair. Altacea, an elegant yet somewhat empty-headed woman with no real point in the game except to serve lunch and become a human sacrifice to the Kuiper Belt didn't bother so much as to squirm, but simply sighed. Arnaud placed a hand over his green eyes. "What are they doing?"

Hauser looked up to the woman and titled his head. "Feeding them."

Arnaud and the gang climbed the staircase and walked upon the catwalk, following the crane with the ill fated woman. The crane stopped over the pen's canopy, allowing whatever inside time to salivate over their next meal. The group peered into the pen, and thanks to clever camera work, the only way we'll ever know what's inside is thanks to the facial expressions upon their faces as Altaciea was dropped in, letting out her last scream between the snarls of the beasts.

"They should all be destroyed! I got my chainsaw right here, let me at 'em!" A giant of a man in tight khaki shorts and a safari shirt walked up to them, smoking a cigar.

"Ah, this is our game warden, Balgaine, he's a specialist in big game." Hauser introduced the sunglassed man to the party.

"You name it, I killed it, but these, these fuggers ain't human." Balgain spat.

The group sweat dropped. Arnaud sighed. "These Lucied's, what are thery're running speeds? Fast for a biped?"

"Well, they're quadrapeds for one." Balgaine chewed on his cigar. "Ya dumb shit. Second, Grow Apple speed, 60-70 miles an hour if they ever got out into the open. They're astonishing jumpers too. You erect a mother fuggin' fifteen foot tall fence and they'll jump it like it as fugggin' leap frog!"

"Yes, yes, that's why we're taking extreme precautions with these! Rest assured, every security is being taken care of, now bla bla bla bla bla…" Hauser went on to have a pointless discussion with Raquel and Scythe as Arnaud conversed with Balgaine. Gawn simply peered into the pen and wondered if he'd get shocked if he spat onto the wiring.

"How fast do they grow? Are they like Shaq?" Arnaud asked.

"What are you, some kind of God Damn Mr. Questions? They're lethal at 15 weeks and I do mean lethal!" This brought the rest of the party's attention back to him. Balgaine liked this and switched on a flashlight right under his face. "We originally bred eight of them, but her…" Balgaine glanced into the pen, tapping the cigar so that the embers fell into the foliage. "Him, it, whatever the hell it is, took over the pride and killed all but two of the others. We feed them like this because she had them attacking the fences whenever the feeders would come through."

"You can't forget about what that one Lucied did in Twilight Venom! They're nasty!" Gawn pointed out.

"Shut up ya dumb shit!" Balgaine growled. "You see, she had them systematically testing the fences for weak spots. They remember…"

The mechanical whizzing of the crane once again came into effect. The group turned to witness the carnage left over from the feeding frenzy. The torn tarp and dangling bits of metal rose from the greenery and then carried away. The majority of the group gulped.

"Well, who's hungry?" Hauser asked.

--- ---

The room was small and dark, centering around a round table. Along the walls of the room, various planned projects were being projected and beautiful plants grew out of vases along the sides. The group sat around this table, enjoying their lunch of easily attainable snack items. Hauser kept blabbing on about the future of the park and the rides and things that weren't very interesting. "None of these rides are open yet, but we'll open the park with the tour your about to go on!"

"Wait, you're gonna open a park with no housing or accommodations half way around the world that only has an automated tour that's just an hour long?" Scythe asked. "Sounds great to me! We'll be rich!"

"Oh what's so great about it?" Gawn continued to grumble. "Should be called Filoser park to me. Get it? Filoser, LOSER?"

"That's hardly fair, Gawn, because youre an idiot and don't know anything!" Scythe replied.

"Oh really!" Gawn growled.

"Ja Really!" Scythe retorted.

"No Wai!" Gawn was surprised.

"Look, we can charge people whatever we want! A million a day, two million a day, and they'll pay it! We can finally afford to synthesize things in Halim!" Scythe sat back in his chair.

"No way! This facility is for everyone! Even the Hobo who represents Slayheim can come." Hauser crossed his massive arms.

"Sure we'll have a coupon day." Scythe twirled a finger around his ear.

"Oh, I'm so sure your coupon for 10 off a million gella will send the crowds flocking." Gawn murmured.

"Hey, shut up over there, noodle face!" Scythe barked.

"Calm down!" Hauser bellowed. "I want to hear his side too. Not really, but I have to maintain my professional image."

"The lack of humility in this room is staggering! You know what the problem is! You didn't get this for yourself, you stole someone's lunchbox! And there you go! You stole their lunch box!" Gawn shouted.

Hauser sat back in disbelief. "Elw! Elw are on the verge of extinction! If I decided to make a bunch of Elw on this island, what would you say!"

"I'd say make mine a hottie with double D's!" Arnaud received Raquel's elbow to the gut.

"Oh no, we're not uh, we're not talking about a creature that was obliterated thanks to demons, or Holmcrosses, or even pollution! Guardians had their shot, and the game developers decided they weren't good enough! You're playing Game Developer here, Hauser, and it frightens me!" Gawn ranted.

"You're a scientist! Wait, not really! They're scientists!" Hauser pointed to Raquel and Arnaud. "How can we stand in the light of discovery and not act!"

"If that light is an ARM." Arnaud whispered.

"Yea Hauser, but you were too preoccupied with whether or not you could you didn't stop to think if you should!" Gawn leaned back and gave Hauser the "I'm watching you" hand gesture.

"Well, what do you guys think!" Hauser motioned to the other side of the table.

"Well," Raquel glanced up from her pop tarts. "How can you possibly know what an extinct ecosystem is like? I study the stuff and just bullshit my way through the meetings! We have no idea what's going on, so how can you expect to care for them?"

"Gimme your pop tarts" Gawn stealthily whispered as he snuck raquels pop tarts.

"What about you Arnaud. Got something witty and clever to say with your brilliant mind?" Hauser looked to the blonde boy.

"Mmmmphmmph." Arnaud replied as he chewed peanut butter crackers.

"I don't believe this." Hauser laughed. "The only one on my side is the blood sucking lawyer you were supposed to defend me against!"

"That's blood sucking legal representative!" Scythe cleared his throat.

Just then, a soldier walked into the room and whispered into Hausers ear, then laughing manically before he left. Hauser stood up and wiped himself off. "They're here."

-------- -------


	4. Chapter 4

The group began to file down the large stairs that spiraled around the enormous skeletal structures in the main lobby. Hauser was in the lead. He checked his watch nervously, placed his finger underneath his thick collar, and coughed.

Raquel looked at the giant maroon haired man with concern. "Hauser, are you alright? There's not any tropical diseases running amuck here are there?"

"Oh shit!" Scythe's eyes widened. "The last thing I need to catch is malaria or West Nile, or Ebola, or River Blindness, or –"

"You're a freaking vampire Scythe, you don't get diseases!" Arnaud interrupted the silver haired lawyer.

"That's legal representative!" Scythe balk talked.

"So Scythe, is it true that all lawyers are members of the undead?" Gawn asked.

"We are Crimson Nobles thank you very much, now back to the topic at hand, money!" Scythe looked to Hauser.

"Well, we'll be having more company. Your about to take the basic tour that the park will open up with, and of course, you'll see it with the parks target audience." Hauser sweated.

"Oh shit…" Raquel glanced to Arnaud, "Everyone, if its what I think it is, get ready to hit the deck!"

"GRANDPA!" Came two very jubilant sounding voice. Running up the stairs like a missile gone out of control were two CHILDREN! (gasp). One was a young boy who looked in his tweens, with maroon colored hair, fair skin, a thick jacket, a yellow shirt with green shorts. The other dreaded child monster was a young girl, in her early teens, in a blue dress with dirty blonde hair and blue ribbons and white stockings. Overall dress not uniform to tropical adventure standards.

"Brace yourself gentlemen." Hauser told the group before receiving a gut wrenching bull rush from the children monsters. They tackled him to the ground and began to squeeze the life out of him with their affection.

Raquel, Scythe, and Gawn looked on with disgust before turning their attention to Arnaud, behind them, who was in complete horror. Raquel grabbed Arnauds hand and squeezed it gently. "It'll be alright. Lets just make it out to the car."

-- -

And thus the group traveled to outside the great visitor center doors, where, on the paved road before them, sat two Ford Explorers, colored green and yellow with a camouflage effect. The children monsters immediately gunned for the explorers, searching the ins and outs of it like beasts ready for the attack. Hauser looked to his group of horrified scientists and shrugged. "You'll have to excuse Jude and Yulie, they've been looking forward to this trip for quite the while now."

"Hold up a sec, Hauser. Aren't you Jude's dad?" Gawn raised an eyebrow. "If so, why'd he call you grandpa?"

"Well, technically I'm dead and this is a body constructed out of nano ARMS that also store my memories and personality. Also, aren't you and scythe dead?" Hauser replied.

"Yea, and didn't you die of some God awful disease?" Arnaud looked to Raquel before being slapped.

"Maybe she picks up the disease on this tropical island…" Gawn whispered to Scythe, who ignored him.

"Anyhow, all of this irrelevant." Scythe cleared his throat. "Where are the drivers?"

Hauser walked towards the vehicles, his entourage coming in tow. "Oh there are no drivers, Mr. Scythe. It's all fully automated 100 mechanically enhanced super doper de cooper Jeep Explorers with four wheel drive 0 APR until January 2100 void where prohibited must be 18 or older to play all entry must be done by 1993 many will enter few will win!"

Gawn and Arnaud opened a door and peered at the drivers seat. In the seat was a machine that appeared like a big stick coming from the seat and a pair of binoculars at the top, looking out the window, with a few tiny hydraulic arms that pressed the gas and turned the wheel. Gawn leaned in and took a seat. "Eh, this must be his driving ARM, bad um chu!" The machine swiveled to look at him and then zapped him with an electric current emanating from its cameras.

Arnaud looked on and grinned. "No bad deed shall go unpunished Gawn." He then turned to see where the hell Raquel was when standing before him, looking into his eyes, NO, his very soul, was the male child monster! Arnaud immediately leaped away on to the top of the Explorer with the look of a horrified cat.

"I read your book! You're Dr. Vasquez! You're Awesome!" Jude innocently showed Arnauds his own copy of "Wild ARMs Erotic Doujinshi and You"

"Oh… MY… Gawd!" Arnaud then took off like a lightning bolt to the other car, where he planted himself inside. However, things were not as they should be. Instead of sitting next to Raquel, he was sitting next to Yulie, the female child monster! Arnaud lost all color and lost his breath as well.

"Hi! I'm Yulie, I like cookies and puppies! Tee hee" Yulie giggled. "Raquel said I should sit next to you because it'd be good for you! Lets be friends!"

Arnaud cleared his throat. "Yea, well Raquel's about to get a good fist to the mouth!" He then scooted himself out of the car to find Scythe and Jude. Grabbing Jude, he shoved the child into the car along with Scythe, despite his protests, clapped his hands, and entered the other Explorer with Raquel and Gawn. "One of these days Raquel, bang, zoom, right to the kisser!"

Hauser looked on from the steps and waved. "Good bye! See you when you come back! Take care of the kids for a few hours." He then turned and walked into the building. "Suckers."

The Explorers began to roll out with much excitement from the party. Through the forest, a giant gate came into view. Made of huge pieces of wood, it stood some forty feet high above the path, lit by torches and electric lights. At the top were the words "Welcome to Filgaia Park" Arnaud instantly screamed. "We're going to hit it!"

Scythe sighed. "They're supposed to fit thousands of people into two cars?"

Jude was playing his Game boy Advance. "C'mon Link! Bite 'em!"

And Gawn tried to make a witty retort. "What do they got in there, Ragu o Ragla? Oh, I'm witty."

Hauser walked into a previously unseen room. It was large, sort of dark with a few spot lights illuminating important areas, like cubicles and computer work stations. Super computers sat here and there as well as many televisions screens and a giant projector screen. Sitting next to a window to the hall was Tony, at a messy work station. He was sitting there in a Hawaiian shirt, sipping herbal tea and munching on butterfingers as he did some tapping on the Mac. (!) At the station across the aisle was an older man, in his forties or so with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a neatly dressed baje coat with several designs on it also drank some herbal tea, but he was listening to a phonograph of Wagner and preparing to put on a monocle and top hat. Balgaine was also there, watching professional boxing on one of the TV's. Hauser turned to the older man. "So how are the systems running, Augst?

Augst, the older man, turned off the phonograph and hid the monocle and top hat underneath his desk. He swiveled in his chair to Hauser and was about to speak when Tony interrupted him. "Everything is Okily Dokily."

"Jesus Christ Tony, first you start stealing my tea act and now your trying to steal my lines!" Augst retorted angrily.

"Hey, I've been dinking herbal tea for years. It's good for you!" Tony replied.

"This coming from a man who eats nothing but butterfingers and carb loaded pies!" Augst laughed.

"You're just jealous that I look classier than you." Tony smiled.

Augst growled at the fat man and then turned to Hauser. "The systems are running fine, however, there's something you need to see." He swiveled back to his computer and clicked on an icon, brining up a window with a scantily clad woman with the world "Hot Sexx "Oops, not that." He then clicked another icon and brought up the National Weather Service website with a picture of an enormous apocalyptic storm with red and black clouds and lightning and four horse men riding out in front of a huge skull shaped cloud.

"Zoh My Gawdz!" Hauser clasped his hands to his face in a very un Hauser moment. "It's the Kuiper Belt!"

"Eh, it'll pass." Balgaine shouted from his leaning position while watching boxing "So stop whining, you pussies!"

"It'd better! I have a lot riding on this trip!" Hauser replied while marching off to who knows where. Once Hauser was out of sight, Augst stealthily reached under his desk and pulled out the monocle and top hat…

The two explorers had been bouncing around the trail, as they really didn't have any shock absorbers (talk about cheap!) through the dense jungle foliage before coming to a stop. On the left of the cars was a long stretch of electrical cables, and on the other side were even more jungle! A sign post near bye had a silhouette of some sort of bug like creature and the words Augoedies.

"Augoedies?" Jude narrowed his eyes. "How do you pronounce it, or even spell it!"

"Use the interweb, kid." Scythe lazily replied.

"I hope its cute and smiles a lot!" Yulie giggled.

Just then, in both cars, an automated sexy male voice came on. "On your left, you will see the first Guardian on our tour, Augoedies. It is beautiful, like myself."

Hauser's voice than came on, as he was spying on them through a hidden camera. Voyeur! "The voice you're listening to is Lambda! Spared no expense!"

"Well you certainly cheaped out on the shocks." Gawn crossed his arms.

"From fossil evidence, we always thought it was a giant bug, but now we know it has natural jet engines! How very sexy. Also, we now know it shoots light directed energy to blind and then paralyze its prey. How very not sexy. This make Augoedies a beautiful, but not as beautiful as me, edition to Filgaia Park!" Lambda spoke.

Everyone peered out their windows, expecting a giant red and gold bug to come out of the foliage and do something… interesting. But no guardian appeared, instead all they saw were brilliant tropical flowers and foliage shifting in the wind, along with sounds of a tropical forest. Everyone looked disappointed. Gawn growled. "Hey, I paid, uh, paid good money to, um, see this!"

Arnaud looked to him. "No you didn't, this was free!"

Gawn sighed. "Oh yea…"

Raquel sighed as well and took her face away from the window. "Damn…"

And thus the tour moved on…

Back in the control room, Tony stood up from his chair and scratched his rump. "Hey, does anyone want a Butterfinger?"

Hauser came walking back as Augst hid his monocle and top hat again. Hauser looked to Tony. "Our lives are in your hands and you have butterfingers?"

"I hope were getting paid every time we say BUTTERFINGER!" Balgaine shouted from his boxing watching post.

"Yup, I've also got some chocolate ARMs too!" Bad um chu! Tony pretended to play a drum on his desk. "But hey, if you know anyone else that'd do this 5000 man job on minimal staff for up to a week for what I get paid than go ahead, make all the references to obesity as you possibly want! If you can though, I'd love to see him try, Hauser, I'd love to see him try!"

Hauser got that bad ass look in his eyes and he looked as if he were about to destroy Tony. "Look, Tony, I don't want to get into another financial debate with you! Keep talking and I'll force a pay cut. I don't blame people for their mistakes, TONY, but I do ask if they pay for them."

Augst gave a sly smile. "Quite the philosophical statement there. I do believe Socrates would be impressed."

"Thanks Dad, sarcasm sarcasm." Tony drank some more tea after mixing in much sugar.

"HEY SHUT UP!" Balgaine shouted. "I'm trying to watch my God damn program! And they're approaching the Equitess paddock…"

"Aru?" The other three glanced to the television screen that was keeping track of the Explorers whereabouts.

The two green automobiles came out of a tunnel into what appeared to be a great ravine. The sky had become a bit foggy and forested mountains stretched in both directions. Very tall electric fencing stretched on both sides of the trail, closing off a thick forest on one side, and a sheer drop on the other. The vehicles pulled ahead until they came to a rest before a blinking light.

"If you look to your left, you will see the most feared creature beyond my sexiness, the giant Equitess! Using the giant blade on its back, it can tear anything asunder with mui machoness!" Lambda went on.

"Equitess! Yulie, Equitess!" Jude plastered himself to the window.

"Does Equitess like mermaids?" Yulie tilted her head.

The group all stared out into the jungle, but once again, nothing came into light. Gawn began spouting all sorts of nonsense. "God creates Rudy, God destroys Rudy, God creates guardians, God destroys guardians, God creates man, man destroys God, man creates guardians…"

Raquel leaned forward a bit. "…guardians eat man… woman inherits the Earth."

"Now that's an RPG I'd play." Arnaud grinned.

"Excuse me, good sirs and madams." Augsts voice came into the cars. "I see the dilemma your facing, so I've prepared a bit of bait so that we can lure the brute into view. Thank you for your time."

"Now that guy, that guy sounded like a man who'd wear a top hat and monocle." Gawn rubbed his chin.

On the other side of the fence, a small platform was raised into view. Chained to a post was a small purple pooka. It then creepily floated in circles, never realizing it was actually tied up.

"He's gonna eat the pooka!" Yulie looked horrified.

"Whatsa matter kid?" Scythe looked on. "Not like Pooka has a sense of self, so it doesn't matter."

"I'm a vegetarian." Yulie glanced to the vampire. "who occasionally eats eggs, milk based products, fish, and other underdeveloped life forms."

"This will be rad! Cowabunga!" Jude expressed some dated material.

Gawn looked into the hidden camera and tapped it a few times. "Now, you do have guardians, guardians on your tour, right? Cus it looks to me like you ,uh, just created a lot of trees, and, uh, bushes! We can call it Flora park! Watch out for the bushes, they're thorny! Ah!" Gawn then leaned back in his chair and chewed his noodle.

Arnaud shook his head and sat back as well. "Equitess doesn't want to be fed. He wasn't to hunt! You can suppress 3 Wild ARMS worth of instinct…"

The vehicles press on, following the trail for some time, coming in and out of forests and glades, before coming into a bit of a field. They sky had grown darker. (foreshadowing!) Gawn leaned in his chair and played the imaginary drums on his thighs. "Ah, you see Equitess, doesn't have any, uh, set patterns, or um schedules! Its out of control, and that's the essence of, uh, chaos."

"I'm still not clear on Chaos theory." Raquel frowned. "It's not that we all have powers in our heads and we can use it to change the world using Yggdrassil, right?"

"No, no, that's not it at all!" Gawn turned around to face the playable characters. "I would get a cup of water to demonstrate blood flow in your body in an excuse to touch your hand, but I don't feel like it! That's chaos theory!" Arnaud, who looked positively bored out of his mind, saw a glimpse of something in the unprotected field below. To this day we have no reasons or explanations as to what went through his blonde head, but he suddenly opened the door and leaped out. "Ah, you see, there we go, no one could have predicted that Arnaud would have, uh, jump out of a moving vehicle!"

"If there's a woman out there, I'll kill him!" Raquel growled as she followed after him.

"See! And she jumps out of the car too! What'll happen next? A giant bird will come and take me away? That's chaos theory…" Gawn continued talking to himself.

"STOP the vehicles!" Hauser shouted. He once again had a visibly pissed off look.

"I told you we needed locking mechanisms on the doors, but no, you guys didn't want to, and now you're paying for it, dip shits!" Balgaine rolled his eyes. "Even a God damn monkey could screw up the tour!"

"That's not true, Mr. Balgaine." Augst spoke up. "We were sure to vigorously test the vehicle with various species of monkey, and all tests proved the vehicles monkey proof!"

"Well it looks like its not genetically enhanced child proof." Tony laughed as he pointed out the second car being empties.

"My dear Hauser," Augst looked up to the giant. "We are doing just fine. This is also a debugging procedure, this being only item number 151 on the list of things that are not working. Of course, this would be a lot easier if Mr. Tony was doing his job." Augst gave a mean glance to Tony.

"Hey hey hey! I've been compiling the systems all day. You know, the technical coding mumbo jumbo that none of you could possibly comprehend. You know that storm looks pretty mean." Tony attempted to change the subject.

"Yes, Balgaine, how does that storm look?" Hauser looked over to the boxing match.

"What the hell do you care, we're inside." Balgaine continued with his match.

Hauser shook his head and looked to Augst. Augst brought up the weather data. "It appears as if that dreadful storm is going to hit us right on. Speaking of which, we should probably evacuate all unimportant miscellaneous scientists and janitors and such."

"Right, right." Hauser sighed. "DAMN!" He broke a table with his fist. "Bring the cars back once they return. End the tour…"

Augst looked up to his boss. "I say, it could have been a lot worse. For instance, the guardians could have escaped and eaten everyone."

BUM BUM BUM!


	5. Chapter 5

"Dr. Vasquez! Hey!" Jude shouted as he made his way through some dense brown brush. "Give me your attention! Give it to ME!" But then Jude was cut short, for as he came out from the brush, he joined in a circle of his fellow tourists – Raquel, Arnaud, Gawn, Yulie, and Scythe – who were all silenced, as if in a Holy presence, around a great beast. An enormous creature, this hairy bovine lay on the ground, breathing heavily. It appeared to be a like a giant Yak, a four legged mammal at least eight feet at the shoulder, where massive horns sprouted out, being of ridiculous length. The bulk of its body was hidden under a long, shaggy coat of brown hair, falling from the spine to its giant hooves. The head of the creature was covered in shorter hair, where its brown eyes were half opened and its snout runny. It mouth was open and its purple tongue sliding out, panting for breath. Standing near was what appeared to be a veterinarian, or one would jump to the conclusion, for she was a tall blonde beautiful woman with glasses and a baseball cap with the 'Filgaia Park' logo. She wore a blue jumpsuit, which was unbuttoned all the way down to the belt, showing off her fair skin and excellent cleavage. She wore plastic gloves and wiped her brow as Jude came near. "It's ok, come on over, little boy (though technically you guys shouldn't have left the car, or hopped the fence, or dodged the spider mines…)"

"What's a giant yak doing here?" Gawn asked as he chewed some gum rather obnoxiously yet again.

"Hey, what's with the gum?" Raquel looked to the mathematician.

The previously described mathematician turned to her and placed on his sunglasses. "Err, a what do ya mean, ahar?"

"You're always chewing either gum or a noodle. Are you trying to kick a habit or something?" Raquel asked.

"It's a um, uh, a um, character trait. Makes me stand out." Gawn replied.

"I think the pretty cow is a Guardian!" Yulie giggled as Jude nodded. "It should have bows."

Arnaud leaned against the creatures shrinking and expanding side, rising and falling with every breath. "Oh, Zeldukes was my favorite when I was a kid, and I can see she's just as beautiful in real life as I always thought she was!" Arnaud closed his eyes and then had a musical montage of him and the Zeldukes prancing through flower filled meadows on a sunny day.

**I Think I Love You – Partridge Family**

I'm sleeping  
And right in the middle of a good dream  
like all at once I wake up  
From something that keeps knocking at my brain  
Before I go insane  
I hold my pillow to my head  
And spring up in my bed  
Screaming out the words I dread:  
"I think I love you!" (I think I love you)

This morning, I woke up with this feeling  
I didn't know how to deal with  
And so I just decided to myself  
I'd hide it to myself  
And never talk about it  
And didn't I go and shout it  
When you walked into my room.  
"I think I love you!" (I think I love you)

I think I love you  
So what am I so afraid of?  
I'm afraid that I'm not sure of  
A love there is no cure for  
I think I love you  
Isn't that what life is made of?  
Though it worries me to say  
I've never felt this way

Believe me  
You really don't have to worry  
I only want to make you happy  
And if you say,  
hey, go away, I will  
But I think better still  
I ought to stay around and love you  
Do you think I have a case?  
Let me ask you to your face:  
Do you think you love me?  
I think I love you!

Raquel sighed and grumbled. "Oh it wasn't just two women down here that he went running for, but two!"

"Yea, and one of 'em's a great big sick cow." Scythe scratched his head. "Hey, this thing is sick! Insurance Premiums! What kind of H.O.V does this thing have?"

Farmel stretched, placing her hands behind her back and elbows in the air, exposing her chest as much as possible without streaking, easily gaining the attention of Gawn, Scythe, and Jude. Arnaud was too busy in La La Land with the Zeldukes. "Oh the poor thing, if it only had a higher defense. I'd do anything if it had a higher resistance." She sat down in the grass and looked sad, pulling out a handkerchief, but dropped it. "Oops, tee hee."

Yulie and Raquel sighed. Its pretty bad when ignorant child monster Yulie even knows what's going on. The three boys paying attention scrambled for it, but Jude (!) came out first, and handed the pink lace bordered handkerchief to the woman. "Here you go ma'am, hee hee." He blushed immensely. "We can all live peacefully together, so why don't you and me be friends."

"Thanks little boy." Farmel took it as Scythe and Gawn growled at the boy. She stood up again and turned around and reached for her the toes of her boots, exposing her posterior to the tourist group. "The Zeldukes seems to be coming down with the same symptoms every two weeks. It must be some of this grass down here she's eating."

Raquel, Yulie, and now an eight-foot tall golem in a trench coat all sighed. The golem, Asgard, looked up and clenched his massive fists in frustration. "And she's supposed to be an Asgard!"

Raquel stepped forward, between the panting men and their teaser. She crossed her arms across her own chest and tapped Farmel, bringing them both to the same eye level. "What's the symptoms? I'm a Paleobotanist, I know something about plants."

Arnaud immediately came to his knees behind Raquel, clasped his hands together, and looked up at his girlfriend. "PLEASE! I'm begging, you, cure her! You have to!"

Farmel placed a finger to her cheek and looked up, the glasses on her nose falling off. "Well, she seems to be having tummy aches and being overall lazy."

Yulie patted the Zeldukes side. "Ah, poor moo moo cow. I hope your tummy aches get better."

Raquel stepped over to the stricken cattle and squatted besides its head. She reached into her pockets and pulled out some plastic gloves (cus, y'know, she always has those) and threw them on. Raquel then proceeded to procure a bit of plant material from the guardians tongue. She peered at it a bit, a disgusted look on her face. Everyone else stared at the scene intensely, wondering what the good doctor would come up with. "Do peppy acorns grow around here?"

Farmel had to think again, coming up with yet another sexy pose, before she could answer. "Oh yea, they grow around here. We know their toxic, but she still might eat em anyway. Stupid guardian."

"Wait, Peppy acorns are toxic?" Arnaud asked, becoming panicked. "B-but we eat Peppy acorns all the time! Oh my Gawd! I think I'm going to be sick!"

"Toxic to guardians, Arnaud!" Raquel turned to the blonde boy.

"Well, uh, how -how do you know what the, um, Zeldukes is eating? You don't, because, um, it's a new ecosystem, and, uh, there's no way to tell how it'll react. And that's chaos theory, my friend. Impressed?" Gawn nudged Farmel, who gave a polite smile.

"Well, there's one way we could find out." Arnaud stood up. "But where are we going to find cropolite at this hour?"

"Cropolite?" Scythe asked. "Look, I hope this doesn't take long, we should probably be getting back soon." But no one was listening to what Scythe had to say. Poor Scythe. Sad Face.

"Well, I guess I'll have to check its droppings." Racquel stood up and walked off a bit.

"Droppings? Like as in…" Gawn gulped.

"Cropolite." Arnuad finished Gawns sentence as he followed the girl with the know.

DUNANANANANANANANA NAAAAA! After a transition sequence consisting of a determined Raquel's face spinning around to some trumpet fanfare, we find her kneeling in some brush under an ever-darkening sky. Her arms were elbows deep within a tower of animal droppings. Zeldukes droppings. But this tower wasn't alone, no; it was a field of four-foot high shit towers, some steaming, some crumbling, and all brown and overall smelly. Gawn made himself known as he stepped into the Poop City and lowered his sunglasses, gazing at the tower in front of Raquel. "That's one big pile of shit, crap, number two, poop, turds, uh, uh, other synonyms for shit."

"Oh so now we've come to toilet humor. One moment your saving the world and teaching the lessons of companionship and youth, the next your doing poop jokes…" Arnaud sighed as he stepped into the area to.

"Hey, um, why are you checking the crap Raquel? I'm sure the vets already done, uh, that." Gawn asked.

Raquel heaved with her might to pull her arms loose from the pile, holding in her gloved hands a small bit of plant material. "Because the vet over there probably has no clue what she's talking about." She stood up and looked at the treasure she had just uncovered.

"What did you find? A satellite phone? Maybe we can use it to call the mainland!" Arnaud made a reference that nobody got.

Raquel shook her head. "It's a piece of a peppy acorn. Just as I thought." Raquel began to take off her gloves as she walked back to the Zeldukes.

Gawn chewed on his gum and looked over to Arnaud. "She's, um, a bit of the straight man in this comedy…"

Arnaud adjusted his collar and made suit after his girlfriend. "You have no idea…"

As the trio returned to the sick Zeldukes, they found Yulie and Jude asleep, lying in the grass near a smiling Farmel, showing off as much cleavage as she did earlier. "Well, what did you find out?" She asked the returning paleobotanist.

"That I should be getting paid for doing your job." Raquel replied.

"Ooh." Gawn smiled. "Cat fight!"

"I don't remember going near poop being part of my job." Farmel thought. "But treating sick animals is! Just let me grab the right needle." She started going through her bag of tonics.

Arnaud noticed the dozing child monsters and scratched his blonde head. "Hey, how'd you get the monsters to go to sleep?"

"Oh I used a little of this." Farmel giggled as she held up some anesthetics.

"That's just something we'll leave out of the report." Scythe cleared his throat. Just then, the darkening skies let loose a horrific clap of thunder, one to shake the very bones of men! A flicker of lightning and drops of rain falling to the brush shortly followed it. "Speaking of reports, I highly recommend we get back to the vehicles! We don't need to file a suit against tourist struck by lightning!"

Arnaud and Gawn nodded while Raquel shook the sleeping children, awakening them to the oncoming storm. "You guys go on ahead, I'll think I'll stay with Farmel here."

"Ooh, I like where this is going." Gawn smiled like an idiot.

"Well, normally I only allow men, but I'm bi, so I'll do it." Farmel replied.

Raquel rolled her eyes. "Just to make sure she doesn't kill the Zeldukes by being an idiot!"

"Right, that's exactly what I thought." Arnaud nodded as Scythe grabbed the whiny kids and headed back through the brush. "You sure about this?"

"I'll be fine. I'll see you guys when I get back." Raquel waved.

The rain began to come down harder and reluctantly, Arnaud went back to the explorers, following Gawn was holding his jacket over his head and pretending to be Batman. Farmel giggled some more. "I love slumber parties. We're going to have so much fun!"

Raquel began to doubt her actions…

--

Back at the control center, everything was a mess. The many hundreds of Filgaia Park employees were about to leave the island, departing on a ship withstanding the storm of the century. The only people that were left were four men, biding their time in the control room. There was a very depressed Hauser, which was odd, for Hauser seemingly only had one expression on his face (unless it was one of those out of character moments he'd been having where he laughed or smiled.), Augst, who had begun to run dry on tea and hadn't a moment alone to try and put his monocle back on (and was visibly showing the symptoms of withdrawal.), Balgaine, who still sat back in spot, listening to conversations because the storm had cut off the satellite feed to his boxing match, and Tony, who was secretly plotting away at his desk across the room.

"Two no shows and one sick Zeldukes." Hauser sighed. "And a storm that will cut my tour in half. Oh, why didn't I build in Gaura Bobelo?"

Augst turned to him. "Because the property taxes in Guara Bobelo are outrageous, especially for theme parks! And with live animals? I say old bean, you're better off with a few rainy spots every now and then!" Augst reached for his saucer and cup, but realized it was empty.

"If we did settle in Guara Bobelo, I'd have a free ticket to the blood sport, not having to watch it on Satellite like some damn pussy." Balgaine growled. "Or at least set the guardians loose and watch the oncoming chaos."

"Even the Lucieds?" Hauser asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Fug no." Balgaine shook his head. "I wouldn't even kid about that. Those mother fuggers stay in their pens or I chop em up real nice."

"I say, you know what else they have in Gaura Bobelo? Disney World." Augst mentioned.

"You is a damn pussy." Balgaine sighed in disapproval.

Meanwhile, during this pointless conversation, Tony had been ease dropping. He nervously looked over the top of his monitor and then shrank down to where he had a video window of a security camera playing. It looked rather nasty out near the docks, and some poor man, large with a rain poncho clinging to his muscular body was withstanding both a wall of sea water and rain as he chatted on a pay phone. He was apparently talking to Tony on a mic. Tony gulped and wiped his brow. "You gotta give me fifteen more minutes, Hugo, I need more time! Keep the boat there, I'll swim to it if I have to!" the mere idea of Tony swimming through hurricane level waves made men laugh.

"I'll see what I can do, but no promises, kapeesh! The captain says he's gonna whack me real good if I don't get us out on time, my wife will wake up with a horse head in her bed, y'know what ahm saying?" Hugo replied before hanging up the phone.

Tony looked over the rim of his computer again, where the three do-gooders were still having pointless conversation. He swallowed and stood up. "Does anybody want a Ambroisa or something?" He received three odd looks. "Uh, cus I'm heading down that way, been eating too many, uh, things, and decided I'd get an Ambroisa to help clear it up." The three continued their mindless chatter. "Oh, um, the systems started defragging now, I figured now was as good a time as ever to do it, so um, if the system starts lagging or being overall non responsive, that's ok, it'll pick right back up in five. Um, the fences… might blink on or off, no big deal really, they'll be good to go to, so, just leave everything alone." He received three half hearted nods of people who really weren't listening. Tony licked his lips and turned back to his work station, bringing up a window on his screen that looked eerily like a mac and pointed his evil ball mouse to a large button that read 'EXECUTE'. He synched up his watch and clicked both the watch and the mouse at the same instance, both coming down to fifteen minutes. Once the time appeared on the screen, Tony jumped up and booked out of there…

--

Having booked out of the control room, and the rest of the compound being virtually devoid of all intelligent life (Tony included), Tony found it easy to run down the lengths of halls to the first security door guarding the runes. This could have been a problem if security was on detail, but because they were on the boat and because Hauser, Augst, and Balgaine weren't paying attention, he found it quite simple. The fat man worked his ways to the laboratory entrance and pressed himself against the wall and checked his watch. "Five, four, three, two, one!" As soon as his count down ended, the power blinked out, turning off the camera on the opposite side of the door and unlocking it as well. Tony quickly opened it and ran inside, but there were several more traps that awaited him. And thus he made his way through underground tunnels, avoiding nasty spiked fences that came crashing down the way at timed intervals, rusty ladders, snow covered mind fields, and infra red halls (he had to use the cigarettes he brought in his stomach to see them!). He also had to outrun a giant rock boulder, work his way through trash chutes, avoid fire being spewed at timed intervals through a waste management facility ala Judge Dread, solve some ridiculous puzzles Alhazad had left over from some time ago, complete a dungeon, fight a boss, and choose the correct cup before making it to the rune chamber. And to think what it would be like if he hadn't executed his program!

Tony looked at his watch. Ten minutes to go! Damn, he was quick for a heavy set man! He quickly fumbled for the fake toy hammer and popped one end, revealing several equip slots for runes. Smiling an evil, dastardly smile, Tony opened up the cryogenic freezing tanks, revealing slabs of rocks, perfectly frozen in their original frozen form. Ah! The magic of reproductions! There were at least a dozen runes for each species, indicating that at a slight glance, no one would notice if one was gone! He snatched up a few, not caring for the names they were under, such as Denogenos, Iona Paula, Dan Dariam, and Solus Emsu, to name a few. The runes were quite small, and thus easily fit into the hammer. Once the hammer could fit no more, Tony made off through the plot teleportation device that took him right outside the Visitor Center and next to his jeep. He snickered.

--

It was dark out now, night fall I'm sure, and rain was coming down by the bucket load. The two explorers, with one person less, came driving up the trail, about to pass the great big Equitess paddock. Arnaud sat in the car next to Gawn, who just wouldn't shut up. "The functions are sitting in a bar, chatting (how fast they go to zero at infinity etc.). Suddenly, one cries "Beware! Derivation is coming!" All immediately hide themselves under the tables, only the exponential sits calmly on the chair.  
The derivation comes in, sees a function and says "Hey, you don't fear me?"  
"No, I'am e to x", says the exponential self-confidently.  
"Well" replies the derivation "but who says I differentiate along x?" Gawn replaced his gum with his noodle. "See, now that's funny."

Arnaud sighed. "God, they had better get a radio installed when this park opens." Arnaud leaned over the dash board. At that very moment, the lights in the car went out, the really out dated CD ROM based touch screen information pad went out, and the cars came to a halt. The headlights, being item number 152 on todays glitch list, were still on, illuminating the car filled with children and lawyers in front of them, which also stopped. "God damnit, what I touch?"

"I dunno." Gawn chewed his noodle. "Try doing what you did before. Maybe it'll come back on."

Arnaud did just that, leaning against the dash board again, but nothing happened. "I hate machines. I blew up a monitor yesterday by touching it."

"Well don't get any ideas while I'm in the car." Gawn raised an eyebrow. "Try turning the key a little harder. That might, uh, do it."

Arnaud tried to squeeze himself between the dead robot and the ignition. Upon inspection, Arnaud realized what he should have guessed already, that there was no key. "There's no key to turn!"

"Uh, um, man you really did it this time, uh." Gawn looked around the car, thinking. "Should we get out and take a look under the hood?"

"In this rain?" Arnaud was shocked. "I'm sure Hauser will realize we're not there and do something about it. Guess we should just sit back and relax."

"What about the kids?" Gawn asked.

"What about them? I don't care what happens to the child monsters." Arnaud scowled.

"What if they get scared?" Gawn pondered.

"What's there to be scared of? It's just a little hiccup in the power. Besides, they got Scythe there."

"Exactly. Leaving children with a lawyer with no power? That's a little cruel. You should go see if there alright."

"Me! Why me?"

"Because I'm comfortable!" Gawn leaned back in his seat. "You're already up there. GO on, shoo!"

Arnaud mumbled many things as he opened the door into the typhoon…

-- -

Augst peered at the screen. It was displaying all sorts of emergency protocols and windows, displaying the perimeter fences in bright red and yellow blinking colors. Never a good sign. "I say, what the devil is going on here!" Augst said a little frightened.

"What do you mean?" Hauser walked over and looked over Augst' shoulders.

"Fences are failing all over the park. I take back my little quippet about what could go wrong earlier." Augst scanned the screen, trying to think of what to do.

"Well fat man said the fences might do that for five minutes or so." Balgaine added as he got up. "Where are the cars now?"

"Umm…" Augst slid to another computer and typed in a few commands. "In front of the Equitess paddock. It looks as if they've stopped."

"What about the phones? Are those mother fuggers workin?" Balgaine was getting antsy. "Please tell me we have land lines!"

Augst picked up a phone near by. "Dead."

Hauser narrowed his brow. "Find Tony. Check Shadow Moses Island!"

-- -


End file.
